


I Once Knew

by ASOIAFside (UMsArchive)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, No character bashing, PRE-'ABDUCTION', a case study of misunderstood understanding, an introspection, fair to say, mostly a directionless rambling, some tinges of the autism spectrum where the misinterpretation of social cues is concerned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:35:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26526088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UMsArchive/pseuds/ASOIAFside
Relationships: Elia Martell & Rhaegar Targaryen, Lyanna Stark/Rhaegar Targaryen
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	I Once Knew

**A/N:** _So this is quite a personal take, and Rhaegar seemed like the good recipient for(with all the, ‘he never liked this or that, but did it anyway because he thought he was supposed to’ and then THAT sudden unpredictable happening out of the blue and incomprehensible to anyone else) - such a subject can really apply to a lot of these characters living in such a ‘status quo’ society.. About the people in their 20s (including me) waking up one day with the realization that the reason why their life feels so miserable without a clear conventional cause it’s because ever since childhood they’ve followed the script of ticking boxes of the ‘right things to do’ in order to have the ‘right’ fulfilling adult life as advised by others/society, without questioning it, and now they come to the point where there was no choice but to confront themselves and wonder if they actually wanted those things themselves, and what it is they would have even actually wanted if they’ve asked it of themselves at the right time, or if they ask it now, when too much has happened and it’s got way more complicated to. You have to face the fact that you’ve sleepwalked through some of the most crucial part of your life, and you have yet to know what to do with that information._

* * *

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The room is as tense as can be. The shadowed look she gives him is nothing but reasonable and earned, granted. He wouldn’t dare confront that fact with anything like opposition. She is as in the right as can be. And yet he doesn’t feel himself truly in the wrong, either. He doesn’t exactly feel in the right, mind you, and he most definitely doesn’t feel innocent.

You can’t walk into the solar of your wife of a few years who’s built her hopes on you and say something among the lines, ‘I never even wanted this’ without consequences, without reproach, without hurting. How can that even make sense to someone like Elia, of her deeply apprehensive character? That there are people out there who can go through life hardly knowing their own self for the most of it? 

He remembers a conversation they’ve had in the very beginning. They were talking about hypothetical children.  _ She loved them. She couldn’t wait to have her own _ , she said. Rhaegar was used to people just saying ‘what was expected’. A potential bride  _ would  _ per usual follow the decorum of expressing that they most of all want to be mothers, of course, though most of them probably just knew it as a fact and haven’t even had the time or allowance to think on it with honesty.

But Elia Martell never talked for decorum. That’s the first thing he’s learnt about her. She was not only genuine, but purely confident in her thoughts. The Dornish in themselves have that way of teaching children’s reasoning from the very beginning. Of approaching matters with subjective questioning. Their confidence in their answer comes from knowing themselves. Which comes from having always studied their own inner impressions and needs.

  
  


She has always been sure of her own wants. She has been sure she wanted a family, by that time. She has been sure she wanted  _ him _ , before she came to agree to this. She’s had her whole life mapped out. He remembers the glances exchange at the dinner table. Her looking at her mother with approval. Rhaegar’s own mother and the Princess of Dorne exchanging their own approving looks. Aerys grunting his own, grudgingly so, and his severe eyes falling on Rhaegar. 

  
  


_ It is not like that in these parts _ . There are no questions here. Only right answers everybody should already have been taught. Aerys is not asking, and Rhaegar wasn’t expecting it. He had not even conceived the idea of having a question himself, and his agreement was on his face without the smallest consideration of the subject. 

  
  


The thing is, he wouldn’t have posed it even if he had one. He didn’t think anything. He was just following the right steps. Princess Elia Martell was nice, and pretty, and confident, and  _ everyone approved _ . It made sense. What else was there to think of?

  
  


Indeed, Elia herself has been confident in all things taking the very right direction for her, from the beginning. Of course she would be confused now. Of course there was not even a right place to even start to explain how rotten a deal he has unknowingly dragged her into from the beginning. Because he had only realised in hindsight, when he sat down to think of it all, what her expectations actually had been from the very beginning. At every turn of a year. With every meaningful moment. 

So how to make it worse, even more cruel, by admitting, ‘It’s not about  _ getting bored of you and wanting something else _ . I never thought of falling in love with you  _ to begin with _ , and it didn’t happen all the same.’

  
  


It is also a horrible, wretched feeling. To look at your already existing, growing children and wake into the realization that you’ve never thought of wanting them. He has them now. He loves them now. But is it because he always would’ve, or because he’s made himself grow into it? Accept it?

The whole of this is rotten. The whole of it is incomprehensible. He is to blame, and yet he has not intentionally done a single thing to get here. It was just how things were.  _ It is just how things are done _ . And one hardly can explain something they themselves understand too poorly, which makes it even harder. 

Having lived by her own perspective of their life, Elia also doesn’t understand any of this. Having likewise lived by his own, Rhaegar is also confused about where her own views would be grounded. Both have their roots in rational expectations, in a way. His, in the fair appraisal of a clearly political arrangement. Hers, in the cases of precedence of a natural bloom and development from that initial stage, given two halves of good disposition and intentions in the equation.

They have lived in perfect harmony for the while due to the very fact of having never actually met in the middle. 

Perhaps this wouldn’t be so irreparable and irretrievable, if such meditation and awareness hadn’t found its beginning in actual longing for something, for a first time.  _ Someone _ . Someone  _ else _ . 

He has let the matter sit. He’s let a year pass. He’s paced the stones of Dragonstone at night like a mad man. He’s felt his smile get stiffer every morning going for joint breakfasts, then skipping them altogether, eating in his study - and little.

It is about  _ her _ , and it isn’t. It is  _ even more _ about watching his pregnant wife giving directions to some serving wench, and finding the very apprehension of his own self, living in this body in that very spot, and in this life, surreal. It’s wondering how he got here. It’s opening thoughts about so many more events of his life that he’s never even given real thought to. It’s going insane in his own mind, and knowing it. 

It is looking down at Aegon and wondering why he named him that. It was wondering why it had to be Aegon. Or why it had to be him. Why this was already a story sealed at both ends. 

It’s reading her letters and them feeling real in a capacity that’s overwhelming. That he can’t even grasp, because he realises reality in its pure form is not something he’s grasped before. 

It's one of those matters that turns one directionless.

That ends badly.


End file.
